About my daily thoughts and life here in Lisbon

Monthly Archives: June 2017

Well I’m not supposed to be sitting in front of a laptop, I should be resting but I’m trying to take my mind off this heat. As if the London tower tragedy wasn’t enough, Portugal is now in shock over the sixty two people who died in the forest fire northeast of Lisbon yesterday. Most of them were burned to death in their cars as they tried to escape the flames and heat. Most of Portugal is reeling under a severe heatwave with temperatures around 40c and above. It’s little consolation that in the southwest USA, temperatures are even higher. Here in Portugal most people don’t have any airconditioning. It’s out of reach for people on Portugal’s low salaries. I must say that after sweltering through the night I’m tempted to go out to buy an airconditioner this morning. I might leave it until tomorrow after our guests have left.

Yesterday the weather forecast was spectacularly wrong. Our rainfall forecast was 0% all day long but I could see the sky darkening. I was forecasting a storm. At about 6 pm we had wonderful rain and thunder. Well it was more hailstones and thunder and it brought down the temperature for a while. I couldn’t enjoy the cool wind and rain as much as I wanted because I had to close the window shutters. The wind was driving the hailstones into the kitchen.

I’m trying to strike a happy balance between resting as much as possible and doing essential things at home. I’m reading as many blogs as I can but unfortunately I can’t send out many comments at the moment. I’ve almost abandoned facebook and I’m sure many friends will think I can’t be bothered. It’s nothing like that though.

Have a nice weekend, everybody. I hope you are much cooler than we are here.

Take a peek into the kitchen to see our dinner being prepared. We’re having potatoes and prawns a la Oksana, the Leningrad way. Oksana comes from Murmansk but lives near to Leningrad these days. We’re having super cold beer right now because Lisbon is hot these days. I’m starving so I can’t wait for the food to be ready so I can get my teeth stuck into those large prawns hahaha.

We’ve been sitting here trying to remember the name of those delicious Russian chocolate coated candies which we used to buy in Bournemouth and Tbilisi. I think they are filled with dairy something, maybe yogurt (it’s actually curds)

Today Kumar and Oksana spent the day at the nearby Caparica Beach but I opted out. I hate sitting on sand. Caparica Beach goes on for mile after mile and it’s white sand. It’s very famous and popular with Portuguese families and foreign tourists alike. I took the chance to catch up with some things at home and do some relaxing in front of the fan.

These days we’re getting only one sort of weather and that’s blue sky and strong sunshine. I would love some cool rainy days for a change.